Korea (Korean: 한국 in South Korea or 조선 in North Korea, see below) is a peninsula, civilization, and former state situated on the Korean Peninsula in East Asia.
Korea is currently divided into North Korea and South Korea.
Although the borders of historical Korean dynasties fluctuated, the peninsula today is defined as coterminous with the political borders of the two Koreas combined. Thus, the peninsula borders China to the northwest and Russia to the northeast, with Japan situated to the southeast across the Korea Strait.
The history of Korea began with the legendary founding of Gojoseon in 2333 BC by Dangun. Limited linguistic evidence suggests probable Altaic origins of these people, whose northern Mongolian Steppe culture absorbed immigrants and invaders from northern Manchuria, Mongolia and China.[citation needed] The adoption of the Chinese writing system ("hanja" in Korean) in the 2nd century BC, and Buddhism in the 4th century AD, had profound effects on the Three Kingdoms of Korea. Koreans later passed on these, as well as their
own advances, to Japan.[1][2][3][4]
After the unification of the Three Kingdoms by Silla in 676, Korea was ruled by a single government and maintained political and cultural independence until the nineteenth century, despite the Mongol invasions of the Goryeo Dynasty in the 13th century and Japanese invasions of the Joseon Dynasty in the 16th century. In 1377, Korea produced the Jikji, the world's oldest movable metal print document.[5] In the 15th century, the turtle ships, possibly the world's first ironclad warships, were deployed, and during the reign of King Sejong the Great, the Korean alphabet han-geul was created.
During the latter part of the Joseon Dynasty, Korea's isolationist policy earned it the Western nickname the "Hermit Kingdom". By the late 19th century, the country became the object of the colonial designs of Japan and Europe. In 1910, Korea was forcibly annexed by Japan and remained occupied until the end of World War II in August 1945.
In 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed on the surrender and disarming of Japanese troops in Korea; the Soviet Union accepting the surrender north of the 38th parallel and the United States taking the surrender south of it. This led to division of Korea by the two great powers, exacerbated by their inability to agree on the terms of Korean independence. The two Cold War rivals then established governments sympathetic to their own ideologies, leading to Korea's current division into two political entities: North Korea and South Korea.
Names of Korea:
The name "Korea" derives from the Goryeo(고려) period of Korean history, which in turn referred to the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo. Merchants of the Middle East called it Goryeo, Koryo, which then came to be spelled Corea and Korea. Korea is now commonly used in English contexts by both North and South Korea.
In the Korean language, Korea as a whole is referred to as Chosŏn (Chosŏn'gŭl: 조선; Hancha: 朝鮮; McCune-Reischauer: Chosǒn; Revised Romanization: Joseon) by North Korea and Han-guk (Hangul: 한국; Hanja: 韓國; Revised Romanization: Hanguk; McCune-Reischauer: Han'guk) by South Korea. "The Land of the Morning Calm" is a Western nickname loosely derived from the hanja characters for Joseon. (Chosŏn and Joseon are two Romanized spellings of the same name.)
History:
Prehistory and Gojoseon:
The earliest known Korean pottery dates to around 10000 BC, and the Neolithic period begins around 6000 BC. Gojoseon's founding legend describes Dangun, a descendent of heaven, as establishing the kingdom in 2333 BC. [6] Archaeological and contemporary written records indicate it developed from a federation of walled cities into a centralized kingdom sometime between the 7th and 4th centuries BC.
The original capital may have been at the Manchuria-Korea border, but was later moved to what is today Pyongyang, North Korea. In 108 BC, the Chinese Han Dynasty defeated Wiman Joseon and installed four commanderies in the area of Liaoning and the northern Korean peninsula. Subsequent Chinese immigrations from Yan and Qi brought elements of Chinese culture to the peninsula. By 75 BC, three of those commanderies had fallen, but the Lelang Commandery remained under successive Chinese control until 313 AD.
Unified Silla and Balhae:
In the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries, Silla's power gradually extended across the Korean Peninsula. Silla first annexed the adjacent Gaya confederacy. By the 660s, Silla formed an alliance with the Tang Dynasty of China to conquer Baekje and later Goguryeo. After repelling Chinese forces, Silla unified most of the Peninsula, beginning a period often called Unified Silla.
In the north, former Goguryeo General Dae Joyeong led a group of Goguryeo refugees to the Jilin area in Manchuria and founded Balhae (698 AD - 926 AD) as the successor to Goguryeo. At its height, Balhae's territory extended from northern Manchuria down to the northern provinces of modern-day Korea. Balhae was destroyed by the Khitans in 926.
Unified Silla fell apart in the late 9th century, giving way to the tumultuous Later Three Kingdoms period (892-935). Goryeo unified the Later Three Kingdoms and absorbed Balhae refugees.
Joseon dynasty:
In 1392, the general Yi Seong-gye established the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) with a largely bloodless coup. The Joseon Dynasty is believed to have been the longest-lived actively ruling dynasty in East Asia. King Sejong the Great (1418-1450) promulgated Hangul, the Korean written alphabet, and this period saw various other cultural and technological
advances, as well as the dominance of neo-Confucianism over the entire peninsula. Between 1592 and 1598, Japan invaded Korea, but was eventually repelled. This war also saw the rise of the career of Admiral Yi Sun-shin and his "turtle ship" or gobukseon. In the 1620s and 1630s Joseon suffered invasions by the Manchu who eventually also conquered the Chinese Ming Dynasty. After that, the Joseon dynasty swore allegiance to Qing Dynasty. During the Joseon dynasty, Koreans brought Roman Catholicism (and other forms of Christianity in Korea followed shortly thereafter) into Korea, at first in secret
Geography:
Korea is located on the Korean Peninsula in North-East Asia. To the northwest, the Amnok River (Yalu River) separates Korea from China and to the northeast, the Duman River (Tumen River) separates Korea from China and Russia. The Yellow Sea is to the west, the East China Sea is to the south, and the Sea of Korea (East Sea) is to the east of Korea.[22] Notable islands include Jeju-do, Ulleung-do, and Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo in Korean).
The southern and western parts of the peninsula have well-developed plains, while the eastern and northern parts are mountainous. The highest mountain in Korea is Mt. Baekdusan (2744 m), through which runs the border with China. The southern extension of Mt. Baekdusan is a highland called Gaema Gowon. This highland was mainly raised during the Cenozoic orogeny and partly covered by volcanic matter. To the south of Gaema Gowon, successive high mountains are located along the eastern coast of the peninsula. This mountain range is named Baekdudaegan. Some significant mountains include Sobaeksan (2,184 m), Baeksan (1,724 m), Geumgangsan (1,638 m), Seoraksan (1,708 m), Taebaeksan (1,567 m), and Jirisan (1,915 m). There are several lower, secondary mountain series whose direction is almost perpendicular to that of Baekdudaegan. They are developed along the tectonic line of Mesozoic orogeny and their directions are basically northwest.
Unlike most older mountains on the mainland, many important islands in Korea were formed by volcanic activity in the Cenozoic orogeny. Jeju-do, situated off the southern coast, is a large volcanic island whose main mountain Mt. Halla (1950 m) is the highest in South Korea. Ulleung-do is a volcanic island in the Sea of Korea (East Sea), whose composition is more felsic than Jeju-do. The volcanic islands tend to be younger, the more westward.
Because the mountainous region is mostly on the eastern part of the peninsula, the main rivers tend to flow westwards. Two exceptions are the southward-flowing Nakdong River and Seomjin River. Important rivers running westward include the Amnok River (Yalu), the Cheongcheon River, the Daedong River, the Han River, the Geum River, and the Yeongsan River. These rivers have vast flood plains and provide an ideal environment for wet-rice cultivation.
The southern and southwestern coastlines of Korea form a well-developed ria coastline, known as Dadohae-jin in Korean. Its convoluted coastline provides mild seas, and the resulting calm environment allows for safe navigation, fishing, and seaweed farming. In addition to the complex coastline, the western coast of the Korean Peninsula has an extremely high tidal amplitude (at Incheon, around the middle of the western coast. It can get as high as 9 m). Vast tidal flats have been developing on the south and west coastlines.
Language:
Korean is the official language of both North and South Korea, and of Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture in China. It is also spoken widely in various Korean communities throughout. Worldwide, there are around 80 million Korean speakers, including large groups in the former Soviet Union, China, Australia, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and more recently, the Philippines.
The genealogical classification of Korean is debated. Some linguists place it in the Altaic language family; others consider it to be a language isolate. Korean is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax. Like Japanese and Vietnamese, Korean has borrowed much vocabulary from the genetically unrelated Chinese or created vocabulary on Chinese models.
Modern Korean is written almost exclusively in the Hangul script, which was invented in the 15th century. While Hangul may appear logographic, it is actually a phonemic alphabet organized into syllabic blocks. Each block consists of at least two of the 24 Hangul letters (jamo): at least one each of the 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Historically, the alphabet had several additional letters (see obsolete jamo). For a phonological description of the letters, see Korean phonology. Hanja (Chinese characters) and Roman characters are sometimes included within hangul texts, particularly in South Korea.
Science and technology:
One of the best known artifacts of Korea's history of science and technology is Cheomseongdae, a 9.4-meter high observatory built in 634. It is considered to be one of the world's oldest surviving astronomical observatories.
The world's first metal movable type printing was developed in Korea in 1232 by Chae Yun-ui during the Goryeo Dynasty, modeled after widespread Chinese clay (Bi Sheng in 1041) , before Johann Gutenberg developed his metal letterset type (Cumings 1997: 65). Though the block printing was used much earlier, metal movable type printing press marked a significant development in printing allowing the same tools to be used for more diverse printings. The Jikji is the world's earliest remaining movable metal printed book, printed in Korea in 1377. The world's earliest known surviving example of woodblock printing is the Mugujeonggwang Great Dharani Sutra.[28] It is believed to have been printed in Korea in 750-751 CE which, if correct, would make it older than the Diamond Sutra. Goryeo silk was highly regarded by China, and Korean pottery made with blue-green celadon was of the highest quality in the world and sought after by even Arabian merchants. Goryeo had a bustling economy with a capital that was frequented by merchants from all over the known world.
During the Joseon period the earliest ironclad warships, the Geobukseon (Turtle Ship) were invented,[29] as well as other weapons such as the Bikeokjinchonlae and the hwacha. The Korean alphabet Hangeul was also invented during this time, and today is regarded as possibly the most scientific writing in use. Other notable advancements in the medical sciences and astrology were also made.
Korea is currently divided into North Korea and South Korea.Although the borders of historical Korean dynasties fluctuated, the peninsula today is defined as coterminous with the political borders of the two Koreas combined. Thus, the peninsula borders China to the northwest and Russia to the northeast, with Japan situated to the southeast across the Korea Strait.
The history of Korea began with the legendary founding of Gojoseon in 2333 BC by Dangun. Limited linguistic evidence suggests probable Altaic origins of these people, whose northern Mongolian Steppe culture absorbed immigrants and invaders from northern Manchuria, Mongolia and China.[citation needed] The adoption of the Chinese writing system ("hanja" in Korean) in the 2nd century BC, and Buddhism in the 4th century AD, had profound effects on the Three Kingdoms of Korea. Koreans later passed on these, as well as their
own advances, to Japan.[1][2][3][4]After the unification of the Three Kingdoms by Silla in 676, Korea was ruled by a single government and maintained political and cultural independence until the nineteenth century, despite the Mongol invasions of the Goryeo Dynasty in the 13th century and Japanese invasions of the Joseon Dynasty in the 16th century. In 1377, Korea produced the Jikji, the world's oldest movable metal print document.[5] In the 15th century, the turtle ships, possibly the world's first ironclad warships, were deployed, and during the reign of King Sejong the Great, the Korean alphabet han-geul was created.
During the latter part of the Joseon Dynasty, Korea's isolationist policy earned it the Western nickname the "Hermit Kingdom". By the late 19th century, the country became the object of the colonial designs of Japan and Europe. In 1910, Korea was forcibly annexed by Japan and remained occupied until the end of World War II in August 1945.
In 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed on the surrender and disarming of Japanese troops in Korea; the Soviet Union accepting the surrender north of the 38th parallel and the United States taking the surrender south of it. This led to division of Korea by the two great powers, exacerbated by their inability to agree on the terms of Korean independence. The two Cold War rivals then established governments sympathetic to their own ideologies, leading to Korea's current division into two political entities: North Korea and South Korea.
Names of Korea:
The name "Korea" derives from the Goryeo(고려) period of Korean history, which in turn referred to the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo. Merchants of the Middle East called it Goryeo, Koryo, which then came to be spelled Corea and Korea. Korea is now commonly used in English contexts by both North and South Korea.
In the Korean language, Korea as a whole is referred to as Chosŏn (Chosŏn'gŭl: 조선; Hancha: 朝鮮; McCune-Reischauer: Chosǒn; Revised Romanization: Joseon) by North Korea and Han-guk (Hangul: 한국; Hanja: 韓國; Revised Romanization: Hanguk; McCune-Reischauer: Han'guk) by South Korea. "The Land of the Morning Calm" is a Western nickname loosely derived from the hanja characters for Joseon. (Chosŏn and Joseon are two Romanized spellings of the same name.)
History:
Prehistory and Gojoseon:
The earliest known Korean pottery dates to around 10000 BC, and the Neolithic period begins around 6000 BC. Gojoseon's founding legend describes Dangun, a descendent of heaven, as establishing the kingdom in 2333 BC. [6] Archaeological and contemporary written records indicate it developed from a federation of walled cities into a centralized kingdom sometime between the 7th and 4th centuries BC.
The original capital may have been at the Manchuria-Korea border, but was later moved to what is today Pyongyang, North Korea. In 108 BC, the Chinese Han Dynasty defeated Wiman Joseon and installed four commanderies in the area of Liaoning and the northern Korean peninsula. Subsequent Chinese immigrations from Yan and Qi brought elements of Chinese culture to the peninsula. By 75 BC, three of those commanderies had fallen, but the Lelang Commandery remained under successive Chinese control until 313 AD.
Unified Silla and Balhae:
In the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries, Silla's power gradually extended across the Korean Peninsula. Silla first annexed the adjacent Gaya confederacy. By the 660s, Silla formed an alliance with the Tang Dynasty of China to conquer Baekje and later Goguryeo. After repelling Chinese forces, Silla unified most of the Peninsula, beginning a period often called Unified Silla.
In the north, former Goguryeo General Dae Joyeong led a group of Goguryeo refugees to the Jilin area in Manchuria and founded Balhae (698 AD - 926 AD) as the successor to Goguryeo. At its height, Balhae's territory extended from northern Manchuria down to the northern provinces of modern-day Korea. Balhae was destroyed by the Khitans in 926.
Unified Silla fell apart in the late 9th century, giving way to the tumultuous Later Three Kingdoms period (892-935). Goryeo unified the Later Three Kingdoms and absorbed Balhae refugees.
Joseon dynasty:
In 1392, the general Yi Seong-gye established the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) with a largely bloodless coup. The Joseon Dynasty is believed to have been the longest-lived actively ruling dynasty in East Asia. King Sejong the Great (1418-1450) promulgated Hangul, the Korean written alphabet, and this period saw various other cultural and technological
advances, as well as the dominance of neo-Confucianism over the entire peninsula. Between 1592 and 1598, Japan invaded Korea, but was eventually repelled. This war also saw the rise of the career of Admiral Yi Sun-shin and his "turtle ship" or gobukseon. In the 1620s and 1630s Joseon suffered invasions by the Manchu who eventually also conquered the Chinese Ming Dynasty. After that, the Joseon dynasty swore allegiance to Qing Dynasty. During the Joseon dynasty, Koreans brought Roman Catholicism (and other forms of Christianity in Korea followed shortly thereafter) into Korea, at first in secretGeography:
Korea is located on the Korean Peninsula in North-East Asia. To the northwest, the Amnok River (Yalu River) separates Korea from China and to the northeast, the Duman River (Tumen River) separates Korea from China and Russia. The Yellow Sea is to the west, the East China Sea is to the south, and the Sea of Korea (East Sea) is to the east of Korea.[22] Notable islands include Jeju-do, Ulleung-do, and Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo in Korean).
The southern and western parts of the peninsula have well-developed plains, while the eastern and northern parts are mountainous. The highest mountain in Korea is Mt. Baekdusan (2744 m), through which runs the border with China. The southern extension of Mt. Baekdusan is a highland called Gaema Gowon. This highland was mainly raised during the Cenozoic orogeny and partly covered by volcanic matter. To the south of Gaema Gowon, successive high mountains are located along the eastern coast of the peninsula. This mountain range is named Baekdudaegan. Some significant mountains include Sobaeksan (2,184 m), Baeksan (1,724 m), Geumgangsan (1,638 m), Seoraksan (1,708 m), Taebaeksan (1,567 m), and Jirisan (1,915 m). There are several lower, secondary mountain series whose direction is almost perpendicular to that of Baekdudaegan. They are developed along the tectonic line of Mesozoic orogeny and their directions are basically northwest.
Unlike most older mountains on the mainland, many important islands in Korea were formed by volcanic activity in the Cenozoic orogeny. Jeju-do, situated off the southern coast, is a large volcanic island whose main mountain Mt. Halla (1950 m) is the highest in South Korea. Ulleung-do is a volcanic island in the Sea of Korea (East Sea), whose composition is more felsic than Jeju-do. The volcanic islands tend to be younger, the more westward.
Because the mountainous region is mostly on the eastern part of the peninsula, the main rivers tend to flow westwards. Two exceptions are the southward-flowing Nakdong River and Seomjin River. Important rivers running westward include the Amnok River (Yalu), the Cheongcheon River, the Daedong River, the Han River, the Geum River, and the Yeongsan River. These rivers have vast flood plains and provide an ideal environment for wet-rice cultivation.
The southern and southwestern coastlines of Korea form a well-developed ria coastline, known as Dadohae-jin in Korean. Its convoluted coastline provides mild seas, and the resulting calm environment allows for safe navigation, fishing, and seaweed farming. In addition to the complex coastline, the western coast of the Korean Peninsula has an extremely high tidal amplitude (at Incheon, around the middle of the western coast. It can get as high as 9 m). Vast tidal flats have been developing on the south and west coastlines.
Language:
Korean is the official language of both North and South Korea, and of Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture in China. It is also spoken widely in various Korean communities throughout. Worldwide, there are around 80 million Korean speakers, including large groups in the former Soviet Union, China, Australia, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and more recently, the Philippines.
The genealogical classification of Korean is debated. Some linguists place it in the Altaic language family; others consider it to be a language isolate. Korean is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax. Like Japanese and Vietnamese, Korean has borrowed much vocabulary from the genetically unrelated Chinese or created vocabulary on Chinese models.
Modern Korean is written almost exclusively in the Hangul script, which was invented in the 15th century. While Hangul may appear logographic, it is actually a phonemic alphabet organized into syllabic blocks. Each block consists of at least two of the 24 Hangul letters (jamo): at least one each of the 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Historically, the alphabet had several additional letters (see obsolete jamo). For a phonological description of the letters, see Korean phonology. Hanja (Chinese characters) and Roman characters are sometimes included within hangul texts, particularly in South Korea.
Science and technology:
One of the best known artifacts of Korea's history of science and technology is Cheomseongdae, a 9.4-meter high observatory built in 634. It is considered to be one of the world's oldest surviving astronomical observatories.
The world's first metal movable type printing was developed in Korea in 1232 by Chae Yun-ui during the Goryeo Dynasty, modeled after widespread Chinese clay (Bi Sheng in 1041) , before Johann Gutenberg developed his metal letterset type (Cumings 1997: 65). Though the block printing was used much earlier, metal movable type printing press marked a significant development in printing allowing the same tools to be used for more diverse printings. The Jikji is the world's earliest remaining movable metal printed book, printed in Korea in 1377. The world's earliest known surviving example of woodblock printing is the Mugujeonggwang Great Dharani Sutra.[28] It is believed to have been printed in Korea in 750-751 CE which, if correct, would make it older than the Diamond Sutra. Goryeo silk was highly regarded by China, and Korean pottery made with blue-green celadon was of the highest quality in the world and sought after by even Arabian merchants. Goryeo had a bustling economy with a capital that was frequented by merchants from all over the known world.
During the Joseon period the earliest ironclad warships, the Geobukseon (Turtle Ship) were invented,[29] as well as other weapons such as the Bikeokjinchonlae and the hwacha. The Korean alphabet Hangeul was also invented during this time, and today is regarded as possibly the most scientific writing in use. Other notable advancements in the medical sciences and astrology were also made.
